Editing and inserting graphics in Mediawiki is slow and cumbersome. The graphics have to be managed separately from the text.

The complex workflow creates resistance for my team to update documentation.

My workflow is like this:

take snapshot and crop

save to disk, give it a filename, copy filename to clipboard

click mediawiki graphics tag, paste filename

paste filename again in external editor, with comment

repeat for other graphics, continuing article

save article

click the link to the non-existent image,

paste the filename and comment from the external editor to the dialogs in mediawiki and upload the file

repeat for all graphics

delete temporary files from disk

What I would really like to see would be an editor which would allow me to paste directly and it would quietly create, upload and link the graphic. It could be built in, it could be external, it doesn't matter.

Does such a thing exist?

Thanks for any help!

There are similar questions out there, but they don't seem to address the problem:

2 Answers
2

Your workflow is quite troublesome. Sadly, there isn't yet a functionality to copy and paste graphics directly into the editor. However, there is a way to simplify how you use a new image on MediaWiki:

Take snapshot, give it a file name and save to disk.

Visit Special:UploadWizard on the wiki and upload all the files, giving it the proper names respectively to be stored on the wiki. (Note: You would have to install the UploadWizard extension for this, since it provides the functionality to upload multiple files at once)

In a new tab, open the editor for the page you want to edit.

Make changes to the page. Link to the new files you uploaded to use it where-ever needed.

Once done, save changes, delete the temporary files on disk.

My suggestion is to upload the files first, so that you have in mind what the file is called on the wiki and use it accordingly without having to see red links when you save the page without uploading the file.

Installing the UploadWizard extension makes it easier for you to upload multiple files at once, which is especially useful for uploading documentation which requires a few images to be uploaded. You need to get your wiki administrator to do this though. If it is not possible, you would then have to upload one file at a time using the Special:Upload form.